Hey, anyone remember former NY Giants' star George Martin's walk across America for the rescue workers who became ill after they worked at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan after the Twin Towers fell on 9/11? Well he's still walking and is currently in the American south west, hoping to hit the Golden Gate Bridge in another month or so. This blog describes his march much better than I could.
It still feels like yesterday. Our office had recently moved from midtown to Newark, roughly 8 miles due west of lower Manhattan. I was in my office listening to the radio, doing my emails, when the morning guy broke in that there was a fire at the trade center. I went to the employee lounge which had the view of lower Manhattan and watched the smoke pour out of the building. At that time no one knew what happened but the rumors of a plane strike were already circulating. During the first trade center attack in 1993, I was working as a delivery person and was actually making a delivery at a bus company when news of that attack was breaking and hung around a few minutes while they planned how to get busses into and out of lower Manhattan for a rush hour that was starting several hours early. I figured this would be another one of those days.
I went back to my office and called my wife, then working in Toms River, NJ. She told me she hadn't heard anything. Soon my radio said the second tower was on fire. At first I thought that the 1st plane had exploded and sent derbies into the other tower. When I went back to lounge someone was saying he just saw a plume of fire shoot out of the second tower like something had hit it. I couldn't believe it, but when I saw where the fire was I knew that there was (down too many stories) no way it could've been the first plane. At that point I think I realized that it was an attack. I don't know why, but I do remember replying "what do you think?" when someone wondered how both buildings could burn. I tried to call my wife back, but both my cell and land phones weren't getting any connections.
Next was total confusion in the office. Rumors were flying. The White House is on fire. The Mall is on fire. The Pentagon is on fire. There are still missing planes. I remember sitting in front of my radio, still on the music station which had gone all news, wondering "what the heck was going on?" A lot of employees came through the WTC PATH station and were unaccounted for (company ended up losing just 2 execs and they were on one of the planes). A lot of our family members worked downtown and were unaccounted for (only one person lost a family member, friends are another story). Most of us ended up in the lounge and watched the buildings burn and fall. After the first tower fell, the smoke briefly cleared and I got a view of the remaining tower. I remember thinking "How strange, only one twin tower. Guess we're going to have to call the twin towers something else."
After the buildings fell, the lounge was packed but silent, except for the radio and some people crying. I remember one manager with is head in his hands and a completely devastated look on his face. We could hear the fire engines roaring past our building headed to the city (I guess). Soon we were evacuated as we're the tallest building in Newark and there was a real fear we were a target. As I still couldn't a phone line, I left an out of office message on my work email letting people know I was ok and our office was evacuating and left.
Newark was quiet, but confused. There was a steady stream of people headed to Gateway and Penn Station, with some coming back to tell us no trains were running (there were rumors of smoke at Penn Station-Newark). Bus service was sparodic. Fortunately we had an employee parking lot and people were given rides. New Yorkers stayed at co-workers homes in NJ.
It was very strange going down the Garden State Parkway and seeing nothing but army and emergency vehicles headed north. Same for seeing all the trucks just parked on the side of the road by the Outerbridge approach to Staten Island. It took 3 different cars, but I got home eventually no worse for the wear, where I got my first real look at what had happened since we didn't have TV in the office and the internet news sites were impossible to get into (rather ironic that people thousands of miles away had a better view then me, just a few miles away).
Our office pretty much closed for the rest of the week. On Friday my wife came home from work and asked what was burning. We realized that the wind had shifted and we were smelling the towers (we live about 35 miles south of the WTC). Going to work on Monday, still seeing the smoke over Manhattan was unreal.
On a personal note all our friends and family members in and around the towers got out. My brother's in-laws are some of those people you see running for their lives when 2 WTC fell. My wife and I used to live in Brooklyn Heights and we were devestated to learn that our firehouse lost men. It was very sad walking past all the memorials that popped up around the city that winter.
I've only been back to Ground Zero a few times since 9/11 (my wife and I used to hang around the WTC all the time when we lived in Brooklyn, it was our mall), mostly when I take the PATH into WTC to connect to subway trains to our East Side office. It was very strange the first time I came out of the Path to the barren mezzanine level and stood by the escalators and realized that they were in the same position as before (I could see the subway entrance to the A/E train and got my bearings). It was unreal to see nothing where the Sabbaros or Borders were (and tourists taking pictures, which really angered me -- how they like it of I took pictures of their ruined home?).
It is pathetic that we're ignoring the needs of our first responders. But then, we're good at that as wounded soldiers from Iraq can attest to.
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